We were present this year at Forum LABO Paris with ELRIGfr to explain our vision of the future of laboratories and how “new” technologies like Big Data, Deep Learning, Augmented and Virtual Realities could change this field. You can find here a short summary of our views.

Our usages of computers and IT are changing, because of the multitude of computers in our everyday life and, of course, in laboratories. Almost every device is going to be connected and is ready to produce data. The challenge for people is to understand how to communicate with these “smart” devices and to use data.

As Michel Rousseau (Microsoft) said, keyboard and mouse will disappear in few years, for many more natural interfaces like gestures, voice or even facial recognition. Augmented Reality is the most effective technology for this evolution and we begin to see examples in many domains. Look at this video where engineers built a new prototype : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx6biWE2VsM

Training and maintenance of complex devices will be extremely simplified, because we will get all informations in front of us, and it will be possible to be helped with the right expert (no matter where he or she will be). Alexandre Bouchet (Clarte) shown us these amazing possibilities, and it is not science fiction, it’s real and usable today ! Look at this vidéo (in french) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ7jQqcJwJc

These tools also will allow us to play and interact with data. For example in our field HCS, we extract dozens of parameters from thousand of pictures. It’s not easy to find robust correlations with simple 2D graphs. By using Virtual Reality visualization, we can be really “into” data and get a better understanding of what we see. Of course, we also can use deep learning and AI to help the interpretation.